Douglas Preston - Two Graves

“ Meu filho! ” the colonel cried, seizing the body. “ Thiago! Meu filho! ” He turned the body of his son over and with an inarticulate cry lifted it, horror-struck as the head flopped back, the throat cut to the bone, the eyes staring wide. “ Bastardos! ” he screamed, dropping the body and lifting his rifle, his vision clouded with rage. He let fly a blast on full automatic, aiming into the darkness and sweeping it around, firing crazily into the water. The other soldier panicked as well, backing up and firing his weapon into the miasmic darkness.

“ Bastardos! ” Souza screamed again.

“Enough,” Pendergast said, not loudly, but in a steel voice. “ Stop. ”

The colonel, feeling the cold grip of the man’s hand on his shoulder, came to a jerking halt. He was shaking all over. “My son,” he said in despair.

“He’s playing with us,” said Pendergast. “We’ve got to find a way out.”

“He?” the colonel cried. “Who is he ? Who is this man?” He felt another rage take hold and he screamed into the darkness: “Who are you? Quem é você? ”

Pendergast did not answer. He pointed to the last soldier. “You. Bring up the rear.” He turned back to the colonel. “Stay next to me. We must keep moving.”

Souza followed Pendergast down a tunnel, chosen for reasons he did not know nor any longer care about. The American moved fast through the water, almost like a shark, slipping along, the colonel struggling to keep up. He saw Pendergast remove a grenade and yank out the pin, keeping it clenched in his hand, the spoon lever depressed.

They continued on until they reached another confluence of tunnels; another danger zone. And then all of a sudden, to the colonel’s surprise, Pendergast turned and threw the grenade back down the tunnel they had just emerged from.

“Down!” he cried.

They threw themselves into the water as the explosion came, blasting down the tunnel in a wall of spray like a water cannon. After it passed, they could hear the echoes of it continuing to rumble this way and that through the labyrinthine passages.

Pendergast pointed to a tunnel.

“How do you know this is the way out?” the colonel gasped.

“It is the one without an echo,” came the murmured reply.

The water deepened, but a stone walkway soon appeared partway along the tunnel wall, with stone steps leading up. Pendergast had chosen correctly: this was a route out, an old tunnel no doubt leading to the lake, a secret water passageway in and out of the fortress.

“ Agora eu esto satisfeito…” A voice came suddenly out of the mists, echoing, distorted, horrible.

The colonel dropped, turned, and fired almost without thought, a truncated burst cut off as his magazine emptied. He continued depressing the trigger, screaming, “Who’s there? Who is it?” His trembling voice echoed away among the mists.

The only reply was the single report of a gun out of the darkness; a brief flash of light; and the last of his soldiers dropped back into the water with a low gargling sound.

Pendergast crouched next to the colonel, using the stone quay as cover, his silvery eyes piercing the darkness.

Souza fumbled out the magazine, dropped it into the water, grabbed another from his rucksack, and with shaking hands tried to affix it into place. Pendergast reached over, placing a steadying hand on the gun as Souza finally got the magazine in place.

“Save your ammo,” he said quietly. “This is what he wants.”

“ Os fantasmas? ” said the colonel, shaking all over.

“Unfortunately, it’s real.”

With this enigmatic answer, Pendergast scrambled up the stone steps, the colonel stumbling after him, slipping as he climbed the slimy stairs to the narrow walkway, running along it and taking cover in an alcove.

“ Agora eu esto satisfeito …” came the voice again out of the miasma, the sound like an ice pick into the colonel’s ear. In the tunnel it was impossible to tell the direction; it came from everywhere and nowhere at once, a low but curiously penetrating voice.

“What does that mean?” Pendergast whispered.

“How horrible… it means ‘satisfaction, fulfillment…’ ” Souza choked, his mind whirling. He could hardly come to grips with what had happened, what was still happening. It was a nightmare beyond anything he could have imagined.

“We’ve got to keep moving, Colonel.”

Something about the agent’s cool voice steadied him a little. Gripping his M16, Souza rose and followed Pendergast’s fleeting form down the passage. They passed side pipes and tunnels, some of which were spewing black water.

Low laughter followed them. The colonel could not stand it. He felt everything crumbling again; his world was destroyed—and now this. How was this happening? Who was this devil?

“ Você está satisfeito, Coronel? ” came the voice, closer in the mists. Are you satisfied, Colonel?

It was as if the world suddenly flew away. Colonel Souza spun with a roar and ran back in the direction of the voice, a sound coming from his throat that wasn’t entirely human, a bestial scream of rage, his finger locked on the trigger, the weapon on full automatic, the muzzle sweeping back and forth, the thirty-round magazine emptying into the mist.

A sudden silence fell as the magazine ran out. Souza stopped, almost as if waking up; stopped and waited, waited for the end, which he suddenly wanted more than anything else he had ever wanted in his life.

76

PENDERGAST, FLATTENED AGAINST THE WALL, HEARD the long, wild, sustained firing and the animalistic scream of the colonel as he charged down the walkway into the darkling mists, followed by a sudden silence. There was a moment of stasis as the sound echoed and died away in the tunnels: and then another single shot, not very loud, from a small-caliber weapon, broke the silence.

A moment later, he heard the colonel’s body hit the water. And then he heard the voice again—the voice he knew so well.

“And now, Father, here we are. Just the two of us.”

In the darkness, pressed against the wall, Pendergast said nothing.

“Father?”

Finally he felt able to speak. “What do you want?” he asked, slowly and evenly.

“I am going to kill you.”

“And you really think you can do it? Kill your own father?”

“We shall see.”

“Why?”

“Why climb Mount Everest? Why go to the moon? Why run a marathon? For me, this is the ultimate test of character.”

A silence. Pendergast could formulate no response.

“You really can’t escape me. You realize that, don’t you?” The voice paused briefly. And then Alban said: “But first, a gift for you. Earlier, you asked about the Copenhagen Window. Would you like to know my secret? Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you. Nietzsche, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

A knife flashed out of the darkness, like a bat on the wing, so fast and so unexpected that Pendergast could not quite dodge it. It struck his clavicle a glancing blow, little more than a flesh wound. He twisted away, fell and rolled, then was up and, after a quick sprint, took cover again, pressing himself into the next alcove, up against the wet, slimy wall. Even with the thrown knife, he couldn’t pinpoint Alban’s current location, the youth taking advantage of the peculiarities of the way sound echoed in the tunnels to disguise his position.

“You won’t kill me, because you’re weak. That’s where we differ. Because I can kill you . As I just demonstrated. And I must say, that was an excellent evasion, Father. As if you sensed it was coming.”